User talk:Abd/Landmark Education/Abd/Company/Labor issues

This page is incoherently written
This page is incoherently written.


 * Landmark Education makes use of unpaid labor which it refers to as volunteers,[1][2] or "Assistants".

The correct English here would be "... unpaid labor which it refers to as volunteer labor or labor by 'assistants.'

And more like that.

I was in the act of moving the text from the page above, this was created causing an edit conflict where I lost text and changes I'd made. Bummer. At the same time, the change on the page above was reverted, leaving this page unlinked. Okay, we can make the change on the page above after cleaning up this page. It's a mess, basically primary sources, the reports of an investigator or bureaucrat, are being treated as if they were legally binding conclusions and determinations, as if they were fact, not attributed opinion. Investigators issue opinions all the time, prosecutors file charges. Those are not binding findings of fact. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:55, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Changed "labor" to "laborers", the rest flows better now, thanks! -- Cirt (talk) 01:09, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The investigation's findings are facts. Yours and my comments here on the talk page about them are opinions. But no matter what we say, it won't alter the historical 2006 determination of the U.S. Department of Labor in Texas. -- Cirt (talk) 01:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It is a fact that the investigator made a finding. The findings are not facts, they are interpretations, generally. These are taken from sources that are apparently not official Department of Labor findings, they are documents used in process.
 * The documents are primary sources. It would be like reporting in a BLP the claims of a prosecutor or adverse lawyer rather than reliable secondary source review of those claims. The linked pages are also probably copyvio, but I'm not the copyright police.
 * What is presented on the attached page are conclusions of law, but not made by a legal authority. From reviewing a number of these FOIA requests, it seems that different investigators have different opinions, but one thing seems clear: Landmark has never been found legally responsible for paying the volunteers, to the extent that they were required to pay. They certainly have the money, so ... why no action by the Department of Labor? Why no claim by a disgruntled volunteer? There are thousands upon thousands of such volunteers
 * I'd bet it's happened. A volunteer went to a labor lawyer and was told, not a snowball's chance in hell. -Abd (discuss • contribs) 04:11, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Wrong, they are official U.S. Department of Labor findings. I have another theory as to why it's possible no further actions happened yet. -- Cirt (talk) 15:29, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Comments
Please, let's keep comments to the talk page, or a subpage, thanks. -- Cirt (talk) 02:51, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * This is not Wikipedia. Commentary by participants is part of the resource. This is a subpage, Cirt. The material on the attached resource page is misleading without that commentary. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 03:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, let's have commentary either here on the talk page or a subpage. Commentary in main page space will quickly devolve into walls-of-text and back-and-forth and make all pages on this website quickly useless. -- Cirt (talk) 04:28, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Walls of text
Advice to :

Walls of text become unreadable and turn off potential readers from reading virtually anything at all on the page.

Perhaps this may be the intended purpose of the author, if so, that's most amusing.

Anyways, please be aware of the Internet adage:

TL;DR.

Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 03:05, 27 October 2013 (UTC)


 * So ignore it or refactor it. Refactoring discussion to bring out conclusions is a process that I did on Wikipedia with an RfC, and it worked, spectacularly. Deep study is characteristic of academic education, it is not "encyclopedic." It's comprehensive. If one has no patience for comprehensive, stay away from academia. I will be going over these discussions and refactoring. My approach is academic, Cirt. The goal here is to learn and explain and integrate. It's a process, and it can be messy along the way. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:48, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Erm, no, it'd be rude to refactor comments made by someone else. -- Cirt (talk) 15:28, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Bolded top note
I've bolded the top note leading readers here to the talk page comments.

Let's please avoid signed comments in the main page space.

Those sorts of signed comments will quickly devolve into walls-of-text and back-and-forth comments which will make all pages on this website unreadable and useless. -- Cirt (talk) 04:27, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * This is a seminar, Cirt. We have discussions. It's part of the seminar. This is not Wikipedia, and the page is not a mainspace page.
 * Discussion is the content at this level.
 * If you prefer to run this seminar differently, we can fork it and you can do whatever you like. We'd place a "section" notice on the mainspace page, with completely neutral information on that page.
 * This is crucial to Wikiversity process and structure.
 * In a university environment, lectures and presentations and discussions can be quite long, and time-consuming. What we have here is like a transcript of such meetings.
 * I started this resource with a purpose, which was purely educational, following the concept of participatory education. You have not signed up as a participant. It seems you are here with an agenda that could be disruptive to the process of progressive education on which Wikiversity was founded. I urge you to reconsider.
 * I have undone your change. That comment was made necessary by your removal of balancing commentary to this talk page. Leaving your own contributions in the resource page and shoving balance here creates imbalance. The note I placed is content, but because it is opinion, it was attributed. You are entirely unaccustomed to this, it would never be done -- and would never be legitimate -- on Wikipedia. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:51, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Let's move the comments to a subpage and link them from the main page. As you have done with other things I tried to add to the Main Page. How about that? -- Cirt (talk) 15:28, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The Comments are balancing material and must be with the material covered. Those comments are relatively unreadable as you placed them because the refer to the text which was just above them. In reality, what we have is two sets of comments, yours and mine. Yours are written in encyclopedic style, but they express your point of view, and that's obvious. Mine are signed, thus attributed as my contributions or opinion. It appears that you think this inferior. Basically, it seems you are accustomed to creating POV-pushing material and pretending that it's neutral.
 * Do you really imagine that material attacking Landmark, attempting to portray the company in a bad light, is neutral, and material explaining the situation, or defending, is promotion? The entire body of "Labor issues" material is off-topic here, but it is a common theme for the anti-cult critics. What do Landmark labor problems have to do with the training, which is the topic here? There is plenty of material available that is both critical and relevant to the training and a subpage to study a critical report was created here two years ago. But your contributions are just the opposite of whitewashing, they are mudslinging. Whether Landmark is in France or in Timbuktu, what does that have to do with the *training*? The French labor investigation was all wrapped up with the French TV hit piece, the sensationalized "cult expose." And your sources are all from FOI requests, portrayed as if they were official Labor Department positions. They were *reports*, and such are used internally to *form* official positions, they are not the positions. This is all of interest to you, why? How is all this relevant to this resource? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:57, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No, the comments are of course still quite readable. However posting walls of text comments on the page itself, makes the entire page unreadable! -- Cirt (talk) 23:24, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * They are "readable" in that the words can be read, but they don't make sense, to read them and make sense out of them requires reading both pages at the same time. "Wall of text" is a formatting issue, legitimately. As a typographer, the default wiki formatting, I'll say, sucks. It creates "walls of text." Comments can be summarized and the full text collapsed, there are many devices for managing content to allow balance. If editors want to do it. There is a basic problem here, Cirt. You don't want to learn about Landmark, you think you already know. So what I write is almost intrinsically too much, if it's discussion of the topic. As I've mentioned, on Wikipedia, this would be totally illegitimate, but, here, discussion is the content, often. Fastest way to learn about a topic: discuss it with people who know about it. If I wanted to learn more about Scientology, I'd want to talk with a Scientologist. Sometimes this can take the form of debate, but it's not the best way. But if I don't want to learn, if I only want to reject, attack, and expose, I won't learn, that's clear. That's why I asked you if you were here to learn. Learning, per se, is not the only legitimate purpose here, but it's an important one. I learn through discussion, and I've been learning a bit of labor law lately. I'm not sure you are interested, since you already think you know. Right? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:26, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Evidently you don't know much about the field of investigative journalism. Also, there is a lot you wouldn't learn about Scientology by simply talking to a Scientologist without first doing extensive research. Also, I wouldn't recommend taking cocaine in order to learn about it. We don't have to try everything to learn about everything. -- Cirt (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Moved to subpage
Moved commentary to commentary subpage at Landmark Education/Company/Labor issues/Commentary.

Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 16:20, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * This may be inadequate, so the note at the top stays for the moment. The problem is, without warning, leaving POV text in place (i.e, cherry-picked fact and POV interpretation), without balance being placed appositely. This was already a subpage on Labor issues and there is no need to avoid commentary on this page itself. You have missed this: Resources on Wikiversity include discussions on a topic. Original research and the expression of opinion are allowed in resources, and we present the results of original research with attribution, i.e., most commonly, a signature. The "resource pages" are about the topic, the Discussion pages are, as with Wikipedia, about the pages, discussion of process, etc. (The preceding unsigned comment was added by Abd (talk • contribs) .)
 * So ... you get to move whatever content you don't like to subpages, and yet also you get to keep all your own commentary on whatever pages you want? Sounds a bit of a double standard there. -- Cirt (talk) 21:18, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The double standard is in your hearing, Cirt. You have an entire page of material that you put together and added, which displays content that you'd never be allowed to put together that way on Wikipedia, and you know it. It was moved to the subpage precisely so that it could be balanced without adding undue weight -- and clutter -- to the main resource. And then you did not want to allow commentary to be added to it, so you moved the commentary to the Discussion page, when it's needed to be apposite to the problem text, for neutrality. And now you are objecting to a simple signed notice? I treated your material equitably with mine, and you accepted this, but apparently you now want to dredge up some objection?
 * I suggested elsewhere that forking is an option, as long as it is done in a way that maintains neutrality, because neutrality is basic WMF policy. You can put whatever you want on a page as long as the page doesn't dominate a topic unfairly.
 * Above, you are responding to my suggestion that the status quo is not stable. Either we have a balanced page, your contributions and mine and those of anyone else who shows up, or we fork. We can fork at any level. I.e., there could be a Cirt Landmark resource, linked from the top-level Landmark page, and an Abd resource or a Community Consensus resource (i.e., anyone can routinely edit), or other balancing links. And if you are placing copyvios and libel, that's your problem.
 * What is not acceptable is that you place material designed to attack Landmark, and want to shove contrary or balancing material to a place which is relatively hidden. You want your material to be more visible. That's POV-pushing. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem is that right now the top level Landmark page as written actually is an Abd-Landmark-resource. For example, the first couple unsourced paragraphs. -- Cirt (talk) 23:26, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Cirt, you still have not acknowledged this. Wikiversity text need not be sourced. It's like a Wikipedia lede. The intention was that the top-level page be neutral. If it is not neutral, that's a problem. I've asked to you say what is there that is not neutral, but you have not done that. You just make a claim that it's an "Abd-Landmark-resource" without saying why that would be a problem. *Many* Wikiversity resources have single authors. People may set up courses here and teach them. But I did not create this with that intention. You were able to edit the top-level resource, but you only did so to add critical material that was outside the basic scope of the resource, which is the training. That was refactored to place criticism on a subpage, with a very brief summary on top. You seemed to accept this, but now you are claiming that the top level is somehow biased. But all you say is that it is unsourced, and "unsourced" is not a problem.
 * If you want to fork the resource, to write a different Landmark Education resource, it can easily be done. The top level page would only contain consensus text, or, alternatively, balanced independent statements, i.e., you could introduce your page and I could introduce mine. It would then link to the two structures. I will accept anything *neutral* there, on the top. I.e, for example, you could make a signed statement that Landmark education is abusive or whatever, and link to your page where you elaborate on that. There are disclosure templates to be used for anything not-neutral. Or you could make a statement that you want to prepare a neutral Wikipedia-like resource, free from interference from anyone "promoting" Landmark Education. You could do that. I'd support it, provided that it's understood that you are responsible for your content and I for mine.
 * Or we can continue to work together, but I'm not going to tolerate abuse and the use of a resource for which *I* am responsible being used as a platform to attack Landmark. I'm perfectly happy allowing you to express your opinions and present evidence, within the context of what could be done at a University. But I'm not happy allowing you to dominate pages that you don't explicitly take responsibility for, and which are, by having no attribution or statement of responsibility, implied to be neutral. Nothing that you have done of substance has been removed, and where it was moved, it was only to allow cleaner organization and space for balance. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:17, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I suggest the top-level page contain as little text as possible and just contain links to subpages that we can each work on separately. -- Cirt (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2013 (UTC)